Chapter XXXVI

"From the moment I saw Lucio Rimânez"--went on Sibyl's 'dying
speech'--"I abandoned myself to love and the desire of love. I had
heard of him before from my father who had (as I learned to my
shame) been indebted to him for monetary assistance. On the very
night we met, my father told me quite plainly that now was my chance
to get 'settled' in life. 'Marry Rimânez or Tempest, whichever you
can most easily catch,' he said--'The prince is fabulously
wealthy--but he keeps up a mystery about himself and no one knows
where he actually comes from,--besides which he dislikes women;--now
Tempest has five millions and seems an easy-going fool,--I should
say you had better go for Tempest.' I made no answer and gave no
promise either way. I soon found out however that Lucio did not
intend to marry,--and I concluded that he preferred to be the lover
of many women, instead of the husband of one. I did not love him any
the less for this,--I only resolved that I would at least be one of
those who were happy enough to share his passion. I married the man
Tempest, feeling that like many women I knew, I should when safely
wedded, have greater liberty of action,--I was aware that most
modern men prefer an amour with a married woman to any other kind of
_liaison_,--and I thought Lucio would have readily yielded to the
plan I had pre-conceived. But I was mistaken,--and out of this
mistake comes all my perplexity, pain and bewilderment I cannot
understand why my love,--beloved beyond all word or
thought,--should scorn me and repulse me with such bitter loathing!
It is such a common thing now-a-days for a married woman to have her
own lover, apart from her husband _de convenance_! The writers of
books advise it,--I have seen the custom not only excused but
advocated over and over again in long and scientific articles that
are openly published in leading magazines. Why then should I be
blamed or my desires considered criminal? As long as no public
scandal is made, what harm is done? I cannot see it,--it is not as
if there were a God to care,--the scientists say there is no God!

* * * * *

I was very startled just now. I thought I heard Lucio's voice
calling me. I have walked through the rooms looking everywhere, and
I opened my door to listen, but there is no one. I am alone. I have
told the servant not to disturb me till I ring; ... I shall never
ring! Now I come to think of it, it is singular that I have never
known who Lucio really is. A prince, he says--and that I can well
believe,--though truly princes now-a-days are so plebeian and common
in look and bearing that he seems too great to belong to so shabby a
fraternity. From what kingdom does he come?--to what nation does he
belong? These are questions which he never answers save equivocally.

* * * * *

I pause here, and look at myself in the mirror. How beautiful I am!
I note with admiration the deep and dewy lustre of my eyes and their
dark silky fringes,--I see the delicate colouring of my cheeks and
lips,--the dear rounded chin with its pretty dimple,--the pure lines
of my slim throat and snowy neck,--the glistening wealth of my long
hair. All this was given to me for the attraction and luring of men,
but my love, whom I love with all this living, breathing, exquisite
being of mine, can see no beauty in me, and rejects me with such
scorn as pierces my very soul. I have knelt to him,--I have prayed
to him,--I have worshipped him,--in vain! Hence it comes that I must
die. Only one thing he said that had the sound of hope, though the
utterance was fierce, and his looks were cruel,--'Patience!' he
whispered--'we shall meet ere long!' What did he mean?--what
possible meeting can there be now, when death must close the gate of
life, and even love would come too late!

* * * * *

I have unlocked my jewel-case and taken from it the deadly thing
secreted there,--a poison that was entrusted to me by one of the
physicians who lately attended my mother. 'Keep this under lock and
key,' he said, 'and be sure that it is used only for external
purposes. There is sufficient in this flask to kill ten men, if
swallowed by mistake.' I look at it wonderingly. It is
colourless,--and there is not enough to fill a teaspoon, ... yet ...
it will bring down upon me an eternal darkness, and close up for
ever the marvellous scenes of the universe! So little!--to do so
much! I have fastened Lucio's wedding-gift round my waist,--the
beautiful snake of jewels that clings to me as though it were
charged with an embrace from him,--ah! would I could cheat myself
into so pleasing a fancy! ... I am trembling, but not with cold or
fear,--it is simply an excitation of the nerves,----an instinctive
recoil of flesh and blood at the near prospect of death.... How
brilliantly the sun shines through my window!--its callous golden
stare has watched so many tortured creatures die without so much as
a cloud to dim its radiance by way of the suggestion of pity! If
there were a God I fancy He would be like the sun,--glorious,
changeless, unapproachable, beautiful, but pitiless!

* * * * *

Out of all the various types of human beings I think I hate the
class called poets most. I used to love them and believe in them;
but I know them now to be mere weavers of lies,--builders of cloud
castles in which no throbbing life can breathe, no weary heart find
rest. Love is their chief motive,--they either idealize or degrade
it,--and of the love we women long for most, they have no
conception. They can only sing of brute passion or ethical
impossibilities,--of the mutual great sympathy, the ungrudging
patient tenderness that should make love lovely, they have no sweet
things to say. Between their strained æstheticism and unbridled
sensualism, my spirit has been stretched on the rack and broken on
the wheel, ... I should think many a wretched woman wrecked among
love's disillusions must curse them as I do!

* * * * *

I am ready now, I think. There is nothing more to say. I offer no
excuses for myself. I am as I was made,--a proud and rebellious
woman, self-willed and sensual, seeing no fault in free love, and no
crime in conjugal infidelity,--and if I am vicious, I can honestly
declare that my vices have been encouraged and fostered in me by
most of the literary teachers of my time. I married, as most women
of my set marry, merely for money,--I loved, as most women of my set
love, for mere bodily attraction,--I die, as most women of my set
will die, either naturally or self-slain, in utter atheism,
rejoicing that there is no God and no Hereafter!

* * * * *

I had the poison in my hand a moment ago, ready to take, when I
suddenly felt someone approaching me stealthily from behind, and
glancing up quickly at the mirror I saw ... my mother! Her face,
hideous and ghastly as it had been in her last illness, was
reflected in the glass, peering over my shoulder! I sprang up and
confronted her,----she was gone! And now I am shivering with cold,
and I feel a chill dampness on my forehead,--mechanically I have
soaked a handkerchief with perfume from one of the silver bottles on
the dressing table, and have passed it across my temples to help me
recover from this sick swooning sensation. To _recover_!--how
foolish of me, seeing I am about to die. I do not believe in
ghosts,--yet I could have sworn my mother was actually present just
now,--of course it was an optical delusion of my own feverish brain.
The strong scent on my handkerchief reminds me of Paris--I can see
the shop where I bought this particular perfume, and the
well-dressed doll of a man who served me, with his little waxed
moustache, and his indefinable French manner of conveying a
speechless personal compliment while making out a bill.... Laughing
at this recollection, I see my face radiate in the glass,--my eyes
flash into vivid lustre, and the dimples near my lips come and go,
giving my expression an enchanting sweetness. Yet in a few hours
this loveliness will be destroyed,--and in a few days, the worms
will twine where the smile is now!

* * * * *

An idea has come upon me that perhaps I ought to say a prayer. It
would be hypocritical,--but conventional. To die fashionably, one
ought to concede a few words to the church. And yet ... to kneel
down with clasped hands and tell an inactive, unsympathetic,
selfish, paid community called the church, that I am going to kill
myself for the sake of love and love's despair, and that therefore I
humbly implore its forgiveness for the act seems absurd,--as absurd
as to tell the same thing to a non-existent Deity. I suppose the
scientists do not think what a strange predicament their advanced
theories put the human mind in at the hour of death. They forget
that on the brink of the grave, thoughts come that will not be
gainsaid, and that cannot be appeased by a learned thesis....
However I will not pray,--it would seem to myself cowardly that I
who have never said my prayers since I was a child, should run over
them now in a foolish babbling attempt to satisfy the powers
invisible,--I could not, out of sheer association, appeal to Mr
Swinburne's 'crucified carrion'! Besides I do not believe in the
powers invisible at all,--I feel that once outside this life, 'the
rest' as Hamlet said 'is silence.'

* * * * *

I have been staring dreamily and in a sort of stupefaction at the
little poison-flask in my hand. _It is quite empty now._ I have
swallowed every drop of the liquid it contained,--I took it quickly
and determinately as one takes nauseous medicine, without allowing
myself another moment of time for thought or hesitation. It tasted
acrid and burning on my tongue,--but at present I am not conscious
of any strange or painful result. I shall watch my face in the
mirror and trace the oncoming of death,--this will be at any rate a
new sensation not without interest!

* * * * *

My mother is here,--here with me in this room! She is moving about
restlessly, making wild gestures with her hands and trying to speak.
She looks as she did when she was dying,--only more alive, more
sentient. I have followed her up and down, but am unable to touch
her,--she eludes my grasp. I have called her 'Mother! Mother!' but
no sound issues from her white lips. Her face is so appalling that I
was seized with a convulsion of terror a moment ago and fell on my
knees before her imploring her to leave me,--and then she paused in
her gliding to and fro and--smiled! What a hideous smile it was! I
think I lost consciousness, ... for I found myself lying on the
ground. A sharp and terrible pain running through me made me spring
to my feet, ... and I bit my lips till they bled, lest I should
scream aloud with the agony I suffered and so alarm the house. When
the paroxysm passed I saw my mother standing quite near to me,
dumbly watching me with a strange expression of wonder and remorse.
I tottered past her and back to this chair where I now sit,----I am
calmer now, and I am able to realize that she is only the phantom of
my own brain--that I _fancy_ she is here while _knowing_ she is
dead.

* * * * *

Torture indescribable has made of me a writhing, moaning, helpless
creature for the past few minutes. Truly that drug was deadly;--the
pain is horrible ... horrible! ... it has left me quivering in every
limb and palpitating in every nerve. Looking at my face in the glass
I see that it has already altered. It is drawn and livid,--all the
fresh rose-tint of my lips has gone,--my eyes protrude unnaturally,
... there are dull blue marks at the corners of my mouth and in the
hollows of my temples, and I observe a curious quick pulsation in
the veins of my throat. Be my torment what it will, now there is no
remedy,--and I am resolved to sit here and study my own features to
the end. 'The reaper whose name is Death' must surely be near, ready
to gather my long hair in his skeleton hand like a sheaf of ripe
corn, ... my poor beautiful hair!--how I have loved its glistening
ripples, and brushed it, and twined it round my fingers, ... and how
soon it will lie like a dank weed in the mould!

* * * * *

A devouring fire is in my brain and body,--I am burning with heat
and parched with thirst,--I have drunk deep draughts of cold water,
but this has not relieved me. The sun glares in upon me like an open
furnace,--I have tried to rise and close the blind against it, but
find I have no force to stand upright. The strong radiance blinds
me:--the silver toilet boxes on my table glitter like so many points
of swords. It is by a powerful effort of will that I am able to
continue writing,--my head is swimming round,--and there is a
choking sensation in my throat.

* * * * *

A moment since I thought I was dying. Torn asunder as it were by the
most torturing pangs, I could have screamed for help,--and would
have done so, had voice been left me. But I cannot speak above a
whisper,--I mutter my own name to myself 'Sibyl! Sibyl!' and can
scarcely hear it. My mother stands beside me,--apparently
waiting;--a little while ago I thought I heard her say 'Come, Sibyl!
Come to your chosen lover!' Now I am conscious of a great silence
everywhere,--a numbness has fallen upon me, and a delicious respite
from pain,--but I see my face in the glass and know it is the face
of the dead. It will soon be all over,--a few more uneasy
breathings,--and I shall be at rest. I am glad,--for the world and I
were never good friends;--I am sure that if we could know, before we
were born, what life really is, we should never take the trouble to
live!

* * * * *

A horrible fear has suddenly beset me. What if death were not what
the scientists deem it,--suppose it were another form of life? Can
it be that I am losing reason and courage together? ... or what is
this terrible misgiving that is taking possession of me? ... I begin
to falter ... a strange sense of horror is creeping over me ... I
have no more physical pain, but something worse than pain oppresses
me ... a feeling that I cannot define. I am dying ... dying!--I
repeat this to myself for comfort, ... in a little while I shall be
deaf and blind and unconscious, ... why then is the silence around
me now broken through by sound? I listen,--and I hear distinctly the
clamour of wild voices mingled with a sullen jar and roll as of
distant thunder! ... My mother stands closer to me, ... she is
stretching out her hand to touch mine!

* * * * *

Oh God! ... Let me write--write--while I can! Let me yet hold fast
the thread which fastens me to earth,--give me time--time before I
drift out, lost in yonder blackness and flame! Let me write for
others the awful Truth, as I see it,--there is No death!
None--none!--_I cannot die._ I am passing out of my body,--I am
being wrenched away from it inch by inch in inexplicable mystic
torture,--but I am not dying,--I am being carried forward into a new
life, vague and vast! ... I see a new world full of dark forms, half
shaped yet shapeless!--they float towards me, beckoning me on. I am
actively conscious--I hear, I think, I know! Death is a mere human
dream,--a comforting fancy; it has no real existence,--there is
nothing in the Universe but life! O hideous misery!--_I cannot die!_
In my mortal body I can scarcely breathe,--the pen I try to hold
writes of itself rather than through my shaking hand,--but these
pangs are the throes of birth--not death! ... I hold back,--with all
the force of my soul I strive not to plunge into that black abyss I
see before me--but--_my mother drags me with her_,--I cannot shake
her off! I hear her voice now;--she speaks distinctly, and laughs as
though she wept; 'Come Sibyl! Soul of the child I bore, come and
meet your lover! Come and see upon WHOM you fixed your faith! Soul
of the woman I trained, return to that from whence you came!' Still
I hold back,--nude and trembling I stare into a dark void--and now
there are wings about me,--wings of fiery scarlet!--they fill the
space,--they enfold me,--they propel me,--they rush past and whirl
around me, stinging me as with flying arrows and showers of hail!

* * * * *

Let me write on,--write on, with this dead fleshly hand, ... one
moment more time, dread God! ... one moment more to write the
truth,--the terrible truth of Death whose darkest secret, Life, is
unknown to men! I live!--a new, strong, impetuous vitality possesses
me, though my mortal body is nearly dead. Faint gasps and weak
shudderings affect it still,--and I, outside it and no longer of it,
propel its perishing hand to write these final words--_I live!_ To
my despair and horror,--to my remorse and agony, I live!--oh the
unspeakable misery of this new life! And worst of all,--God whom I
doubted, God whom I was taught to deny, this wronged, blasphemed,
and outraged God EXISTS! And I could have found Him had I
chosen,--this knowledge is forced upon me as I am torn from
hence,--it is shouted at me by a thousand wailing voices! ... too
late!--too late!--the scarlet wings beat me downward,--these strange
half-shapeless forms close round and drive me onward ... to a
further darkness, ... amid wind and fire!

* * * * *

Serve me, dead hand, once more ere I depart, ... my tortured spirit
must seize and compel you to write down this thing unnameable, that
earthly eyes may read, and earthly souls take timely warning! ... I
know at last WHOM I have loved!--whom I have chosen, whom I have
worshipped! ... Oh God, have mercy! ... I know WHO claims my worship
now, and drags me into yonder rolling world of flame! ... his name
is ........"

Here the manuscript ended,--incomplete and broken off abruptly,--and there was a blot on the last sentence as though the pen had been violently wrenched from the dying fingers and hastily flung down.

The clock in the west room again chimed the hour. I rose stiffly from my chair, trembling,--my self-possession was giving way, and I began to feel at last unnerved. I looked askance at my dead wife,--she, who with a superhuman dying effort had declared herself to be yet alive,--who, in some imaginable strange way had seemingly written _after_ death, in a frantic desire to make some appalling declaration which nevertheless remained undeclared. The rigid figure of the corpse had now real terrors for me,--I dared not touch it,--I scarcely dared look at it, ... in some dim inscrutable fashion I felt as if "scarlet wings" environed it, beating me down, yet pressing me on,--me too, in my turn! With the manuscript gathered close in my hand, I bent nervously forward to blow out the wax lights on the toilet table, ... I saw on the floor the handkerchief odorous with the French perfume the dead woman had written of,--I picked it up and placed it near her where she sat, grinning hideously at her own mirrored ghastliness. The flash of the jewelled serpent round her waist caught my eyes anew as I did this, and I stared for a moment at its green glitter, dumbly fascinated,--then, moving stealthily, with the cold sweat pouring down my back and every pulse in me rendered feeble by sheer horror, I turned to leave the room. As I reached the portiére and lifted it, some instinct made me look back at the dread picture of the leading "society" beauty sitting stark and livid pale before her own stark and livid-pale image in the glass,--what a "fashion-plate" she would make now, I thought, for a frivolous and hypocritical "ladies' paper!"

"You say you are not dead, Sibyl!" I muttered aloud--"Not dead, but living! Then, if you are alive, where are you, Sibyl?----where are you?"

The heavy silence seemed fraught with fearful meaning,--the light of the electric lamps on the corpse and on the shimmering silk garment wrapped round it appeared unearthly,--and the perfume in the room had a grave-like earthy smell. A panic seized me, and dragging frantically at the portiére till all its velvet folds were drawn thickly together, I made haste to shut out from my sight the horrible figure of the woman whose bodily fairness I had loved in the customary way of sensual men,--and left her without so much as a pardoning or pitying kiss of farewell on the cold brow. For, ... after all I had Myself to think of, ... and She was dead!